Tuesday night was a dream for Chaka Traore as he came off the bench and scored his first goal for the AC Milan first team, and he followed that up with his first Serie A goal today.
Calciomercato.com write how Chaka is having a season that is seeing him take big steps forward in his development. First came his senior debut in the Champions League against Borussia Dortmund, then his first league appearance against Frosinone and finally this golden week at the beginning of 2024.
The 19-year-old has been scoring plenty of goals for the Primavera and quite a lot of them came the same way: starting on the left, cutting inside onto his favoured right foot and finding the far corner. It’s no coincidence that the goal against Empoli came just like that.
Former Primavera coach Federico Giunti outlined it well in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport: “His trademark is his right-footed shot to the far post, strong and precise. In training he has scored dozens of them, like this.
Under Giunti’s management, Traoré scored 9 goals and 7 assists in the 2021-22 season and it is from there that the idea begun to be born that he could one day become the deputy to Rafael Leao in the first team.
Traore’s Serie A debut actually came back on 10 April 2021, when at 17 years old he played for Parma against Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s Milan. It was a record-breaking debut too, as he became the first footballer born in 2004 to play in the Italian top flight.
It did not take long for his talent to catch the eye of the Milan management, who immediately tried to bring him in. The Ivorian gave several demonstrations of his qualities in the Primavera at first, with excellent performances in the league and UEFA Youth League.
Traoré’s first contact with Italian football was with the shirt of US Audace, an amateur team in Parma, after a long journey on a makeshift boat that took him from Africa to the Italian coast.
He reached Emilia Romagna accompanied by an agent (later convicted of aiding and abetting immigration), under the false surname of Cissé and was put under the care of social services.
From nothing to Serie A via Parma, Traoré is one of the best pieces of news for this AC Milan team, who now have great hopes in him for the future.
He’s not even close
More as a first alternative on the wing to Leao instead of Chuk.
Alternative to Leao?? Don’t be ridiculous..
Not an “alternative” but he can grow up to be a very useful player, especially that we didn’t produce many good players lately.
I don’t want to praise him or criticize him too much, he barely started playing, but we didn’t have many youngsters with barely 3 games that had scored 1 goal, let alone 2 goals.
Let the kid develop in peace. Afford him minutes when you can. He scored against two weak teams when Milan had a comfortable lead each time. But he’s nowhere near being a Leao deputy nor should he be under the pressure to be one. I’m still taking Okafor as a back up.
Wow. People won’t even give this a guy a chance lol. He is his own player and I think he will be a good part to this team. He shows great talent and movement.
Real deputy to Leao? Now the writer is just trying to create a flood of comments. We already have Okafor and he’ll be available soon. Two goals in two matches? Yeah, great start but there is no way he’ll continue the form until the summer. Let’s not get carried away here and suggest we have a new Messi on our hands. Yet.